The present disclosure relates to computer systems, and more specifically, to computer memory systems with linked paths.
Main memory in a system can be setup in various physical configurations to optimize power consumption and performance. Memory may be mirrored for redundancy to mitigate memory failures. Memory mirroring is a feature of some memory systems which provides for two copies of data to be stored in memory including a main copy and a backup copy. With traditional memory mirroring, two complete paths are necessary. Each path includes a memory controller connected to a memory buffer through a high speed memory channel and the memory buffer connected to a set of memory modules through DDR channels.
Some memory buffers contain two high speed memory channels. Sometimes the second high speed memory channel is used to cascade data to a second memory buffer on the same path. In other memory systems, a memory buffer contains a second high speed memory channel which is unused.